WARNING: Modifying the fuel system on your car is potentially dangerous, I am NOT responsible for any accidents that may happen, be careful, and proceed at your own risk!!!

Sometimes it is a good idea to be able to monitor your fuel pressure when tuning or repairing your car. If for instance the car will not start you can give the gauge an instant look to see that there is fuel pressure and you can rule out a dead fuel pump hopefully. External fuel gauges are inexpensive and fairly easy to install. I bought a fuel gauge from a local speed shop for $20. This is just a small 1 1/2" gauge with a 1/8" NPT thread on the back. I then bought a male to male 1/8" NPT adapter and a 1/8" male NPT to 5/16 hose barb. I screwed the adapter onto the gauge and the barb adapter to that after coating all the threads with Teflon tape. Here is a picture that shows how things attatch.

I used a piece of 1" aluminum bar stock to make a mounting bracket, which you can see in the picture above. Depending on where you are mounting the gauge will determine what kind of bracket you want to make. I find the aluminum bar is cheap lightweight and easy to work with. An added bonus is that I can polish it to a nice mirror finish with my buffing wheel and it looks really slick. In the next picture you can see how the bracket is fastened onto the back of the gauge using the 2 screws that hold the bottom cover of the gauge on. These are just plain fine thread machine screws and I did have to use slightly longer ones to go through the bracket and the bottom of the gauge and grab securely.

Since I have removed the EGR from my car my plan was to use one of the studs that held it on the intake manifold due to its close proximity to the cold start injection hose. I purchased a spare cold start injector hose from the junkyard and a 5/16" tee fitting. I cut the cold start hose in 2 and removed about 1/4" from each side to allow for the width of the tee fitting. I used fuel injection clamps to clamp the hoses onto the tee fitting. I left things a little loose for now to allow for some tweaking during installation. Here is what it looked like at this point.

Now you will need some fuel injection hose that will run from the tee on the cold start hose to the gauge itself. The actual distance will depend on where you locate the gauge. Be sure the hose you buy is fuel injection hose and not just regular fuel hose there is a difference and you don't want any leaks!!!!!! Next replace your cold start hose with the modified one, use new copper washers you cannot reuse the old ones. Since the EGR is out of the way on my car it was very easy to get to the cold start hose bolts for me, your situation may be different.

Use more fuel injection clamps to clamp things in place and double and triple check them all before you attempt to start the car. Be careful that the routing of the fuel hose to your gauge does not come into contact with any part of the throttle linkage or other moving parts that could chafe it, operate the throttle by hand to be sure you have good clearance. Here is a picture with everything in place on my car. You can sort of see in the picture that the tee fitting points down and the hose makes a 180 degree bend and up into the gauge. The tee fitting has been highlighted in the yellow circle to make it easier to pick out.

Once you think you have everything in place and tight, start the car with someone watching the fuel system area with a fire extinguisher in hand, once it fires and runs for a second immediately shut the engine off and really thoroughly inspect everything for leaks. Your gauge should be registering some fuel pressure now and if you did a good job there will be no leaks.

Any questions or comments should be adressed to wjh@ufl.edu